Dear members of the M100 advisory board,
Dear participants in today’s discussions,
My dear Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier,
Honourable Ambassador Etienne,
Dear award-winners,
My dear Gérard Biard,
Mr. von Schirach,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to cordially welcome you to the presentation of the M100 Media Award, the highlight of the day and the conclusion of the 11th M100 Sanssouci Colloquium!
This year too I again want to wish you all a very warm welcome to Sanssouci’s Orangery Palace – this time with some inconveniences due to the substantial security efforts necessary. I hope these were not too burdensome for all of you.
It is a special honour for me that the German Federal Foreign Minister is giving today’s keynote speech for the 70th anniversary of the Potsdam Agreement, taking time for us despite the international situation.
Please understand if he has to leave us shortly after his speech. Thank you, and a warm welcome to you, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
And French Ambassador Philippe Etienne is also among us today – a warm welcome to you as well!
As Lord Mayor of Potsdam, I am delighted that once again, 50 internationally known opinion leaders and media professionals have used the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium to engage in an exchange of views.
The consequences of the Potsdam Agreement and the current situation in Europe have been discussed throughout the day, at a round table and in three sessions.
I certainly need not say that we as the state capital of Potsdam feel a historic responsibility simply through the agreement’s connection with the city name.
Ten weeks after the victory over Hitler’s Germany and the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces, the Potsdam Conference and its outcome was strongly shaped by the anti-fascist consensus of the three powers. But there was already bitter contention over several issues in which the conflicting interests of the Soviet Union and the Western Allies clashed.
What the Potsdam Agreement said with regard to the political future of occupied Germany sounded unambiguous, and yet was not. German militarism and National Socialism were to be eradicated. The German people were to be neither destroyed nor enslaved, but were rather to be given the opportunity “to prepare for the eventual reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis and for eventual peaceful cooperation in international life.” The problem was that the Western powers and the Soviet Union had opposing views on this.
Historian Heinrich August Winkler has vividly described this. And yet hardly any era of Germany history has brought such a long stretch of peace on all sides as did Germany’s post-war period – albeit at the price of the Cold War and a nuclear-armed conflict.
In this way a status quo that lasted until 1989/1990 was created, with which the international community remained inviolable. The Potsdam Agreement was ultimately replaced by the Two Plus Four Treaty, which itself has meant 25 years of political stability.
But most recently since the Ukraine crisis, the consensus regarding the inviolability of national borders in Europe has dissolved. The economic and financial crisis has put solidarity in Europe to a severe test.
Throughout Europe, globalisation fears, xenophobia, and the fear of social decline have long been perceived as constituting a dangerous political category. These themes retain a high profile today, although especially under the impact of the huge influx of refugees from Syria, Africa, and other war- and crisis-torn regions.
I think the conference has helped advance these issues in important ways. I am eager to hear what German Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will tell us in his keynote speech for the evening. After all, as one of the primary actors, he is occupied with all of these issues every day.
The world is in motion. Europe faces a new challenge. How do we solve the problems of the future? Foreign Minister Steinmeier, I would like to invite you to the podium!
